Gold and Diamonds
by rubblerousing
Summary: The complicated relationship between Q and Silva, told inconveniently backwards, starting with the night of the supposed death of Silva and ending with their meeting in China.
1. Chapter 1

Q put his forehead against the mirror and closed his eyes. He concentrated on taking deep, steady breaths, on purposefully clearing his mind of all thoughts, on not remembering. He gripped the sink so hard that his knuckles were white, but his mind at least was empty.

In a daze he eventually exited the restroom and went back to work. Like a robot he answered questions and gave orders and sat silently, chewing on a thumbnail, whenever he could. In the short moments he allowed himself to think, he thought, What should I do? Then he would rub his eyes hard and answer himself. I can't do anything.

When someone called him out on it, pointed out in front of everyone that Q was acting excessively weird, he knew he had to get out of there. "I'm sick," he tried to admit, hoping he looked as helpless as he felt. "I didn't want to say anything. It's that flu that's been going round, I'm sure."

He sped home, far exceeding the speed limit, not really caring if he lost control of the car and overturned it or hurtled himself into a restaurant. He went faster the closer he got to home, faster the more time that passed. He had to slam on the brakes, and they squealed, when he arrived. He was about eighty percent sure the government wasn't following him just then, but he certainly wasn't helping the situation by acting outrageous and making a spectacle of himself. An old man stared at him from across the street when he jumped out of the car and ran up the steps, two at a time, to his flat. He just couldn't help it.

He went into the bedroom closet. He pushed himself back behind the smart, ironed dress shirts and sat on the floor. It was dark outside, night time, and he hadn't turned on any light in the house. It was black in the closet, and he was hidden, and he cried. It wasn't a big sobbing melodrama, but he allowed himself a few minutes of quiet, utter despair; a time when he felt like his lungs and heart were being ripped from his throat and that he was falling into a black hole and that the whole world was ending, and then it was over. He bit his tongue and wiped away the tears and looked at his cellphone, which hadn't made a sound all day, for the seventeen millionth time.

He was going to have to go to fucking Scotland. No one else would go after Silva's body. He didn't have family, at least none who knew where he was or what he'd become. His friends were all fake and wouldn't stick around long enough to take care of it. If anyone ever found him, it would be a stranger. They'd probably cremate him, and throw away the ashes. Wash him down a drain, or something.

Q hadn't spoken to his parents in almost three years, but he could clearly hear his mother's grating voice in his mind, the sound of his conscious. Why exactly do you want to give a dignified burial to a ruthless murderer? Not exactly pragmatic, is it?

"Not exactly," he answered himself under his breath, and wiped the last of his tears away. He pulled the Internet up on his phone, thought better of it, and went to his laptop instead. The phone was secure enough, but the laptop was even securer.

He'd almost booked a train ticket to the highlands, under a different name, of course, when the phone he'd abandoned in the closet rang, muffled and distorted.

He went back for it, crawling on his knees to reach it in the back where he'd been sitting. The display announced an incoming call from the number 0. He accepted it and put the phone to his ear, but said nothing. Neither did the caller. They just breathed for a while.

There was some scratching on the line, some scuffling, some rearranging, and then Silva said, sounding a million miles away, "Shall I come to London for a while?"

Q closed his eyes and sighed. "You can't… you can't just pretend to be dead around them. If they weren't so shaken up over the death of M, they would have brought you back and locked you in a crypt until you were a skeleton to be sure you weren't faking it. I didn't think you were that careless. I thought something had actually happened to you."

"You thought I was dead? From a little scratch, from a little knife?" Silva laughed, half manically, half scoffing. "You've seen me at the brink of death before. I was far more worse off then. If nothing has killed me yet, a little knife won't kill me now."

"Well, I didn't actually know the specifics of the whole thing, you know. He could have hacked you up in a passionate fit. They said you were dead, and M was dead, and everyone immediately forgot about you once that came out."

"But not you."

Q squinted at his nails in the dark. His eyelids felt heavy after crying. "I have complicated priorities."

Silva laughed again, and then coughed harshly. He sounded sick, or in any case not healthy. Q wanted to ask if he was all right. His mother's voice floated through his mind again. Ruthless murderer, she said. He bit his tongue and asked Silva nothing. Complicated priorities.

Silva regained composure and posed the question again. "Anyway, shall I come to London for a while?"

"You might be noticed," Q answered dourly.

"I suppose I can't stay at your flat."

Q snorted. "They've stopped stalking me, mostly. I've checked the place ten times for cameras but I can't find anything. But, obviously, no. I shouldn't even be speaking to you on the phone here."

"Then we'll stay at a hotel. I'll get us some nice rooms. A suite. And I'll put it under a new name. I'll have to think of one. My life as I knew it is over now, you know. I'll have to start all over again." He paused. "And I'd like for you to be there with me. I rather miss you."

Q weighed his options of response carefully before speaking, but couldn't help himself from trying to be mildly hurtful. "Why don't you just find another island and a gaggle of prostitutes? It suited you fine last time."

"I don't know about the future. I just know, for now, I'm going into hiding. I'm not speaking to or meeting with anyone. You're the only one I'm telling. You're the only one who will know I still exist."

He didn't know what to say, so he was silent for a while.

"Q?"

He frowned. "Don't fucking call me that."

Silva laughed softly. "But it's so… winsome. It's cute."

"Why did you kill that girl?" Q changed the subject. "Severine, right? One of your thug bodyguards told me her name before they rather aggressively led me in the opposite direction of you, the last time I saw you. I had a black eye after that."

Silva sighed. It might have been annoyance, it might have been sympathetic. "Then the skin around your eyes will be the first thing I kiss when I see you." He paused, but Q didn't respond, so he went on. "Do you remember what I said to you the first time we met?"

"You said a lot."

"I told you you were the first person I'd looked in the eyes since I came back to life. And I want you to be, again. You're my angel of resurrection. I've been hiding from everyone since I came out of that wretched chapel. I haven't looked at a soul. I've been wearing sunglasses. I've become a shadow."

Q sighed. "Are you ever going to apologise?"

"For what?" Silva asked, but before Q had a second to protest he said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I am sorry."

Q was quiet again.

"You're thinking I might kill you," Silva said. He didn't ask if this theory was correct. He just stated it, because it was.

"Well, I don't know why you wouldn't," Q said. "I'm not a fraction as good looking as that girl."

"As soon as I see a person for the first time I judge whether or not I should kill them," Silva said. "Not whether or not I will, but whether or not I should. Whether or not I should like to. I look into a person's eyes and I know. Sometimes I think I am wrong, but I never change my mind. I would never kill you. I would never hurt you."

"Except emotionally," Q interjected.

"Why do you think I encouraged you to take that ridiculous job? You're protected there, at the holy MI6, from evil and depraved people such as myself. You're safe. I didn't pay attention to you for so long because I knew you were safe. I knew you were too smart to believe the bullshit and could exploit the protection anyway. And, you know, be of invaluable service to me when I needed you."

"I think it puts me more frequently in contact with evil and depraved people, actually," Q said.

"Maybe you get closer to them, but no one will let them touch you. You're cleverer than all of them combined, you're as innocent as a little puppy. The agents would fall over themselves protecting you. I knew it all along."

"I am not as innocent as a puppy," Q frowned. "I just said 'fucking' a minute ago."

"I meant you look as innocent as a puppy."

"The point is, you knew it all along. You had this all planned since you met me. I knew you had a lot of it planned, but I didn't know you ever planned to leave me out of some of it."

"For your protection, of course."

Q rolled his eyes. "You probably had me planned before you met me."

"The point is," Silva repeated in agreement, "I knew everything all along. All you have to do is keep trusting me. Now, shall I come to London or not?"


	2. Chapter 2

Three flats before the flat he moved into when MI6 hired him, Q lived in a dingy and dark little place at least three trains away from anything worthwhile. It was there, one particular rainy day in November, that Silva showed up unannounced. Q hadn't seen him in months, and perhaps even more importantly, he didn't know Silva knew where he lived. But when pressed Silva just said, "I know where everybody lives."

Q was sick with a cold and was wrapped in several blankets on his old green sofa with the holes in it while Silva wordlessly paced around the place. Q still wasn't sure of the reason behind the visit.

"You're making me nervous," Q told him eventually. "If you're going to expend so much energy, you might make me a bowl of soup."

Silva returned from the hallway somewhere, or perhaps Q's bedroom, back to the living room to look at him. Obviously, he wasn't going to make soup. "You should be nervous. I'm nervous."

"Why?"

"I have to tell you something."

That was unsettling. Q shifted his legs uncomfortably under the blankets. It couldn't be good if Silva was nervous. Had he ever been nervous before in his life? "What is it?"

Silva still stood, looking down at him from above. He clasped his hands behind his back, and considered for a while how to begin. "I've made MI6 believe they have discovered and are interested in hiring you for a position." He paused. "Possibly as Quartermaster."

Q blinked, stunned. "But… but I've never had a real job and I live on ramen noodles and spend the majority of my time playing video games and… and all of my time being nobody." These were the same reasons he wondered every day why Silva ever gave him any attention at all. How did he, possibly the lamest human being on earth, ever get to be an intimate acquaintance with a fantastic, brilliant, violent, passionate psychopath? Silva was a jet setter. He seemed to be a millionaire. Q had seventeen pounds to his name and hadn't been on a plane since he'd come back to London from Shanghai two years ago, and would probably never set foot on one again. Silva was a black market trader, a drug dealer, a human trafficker, a hacker, a liar, and a thief. He didn't have to do any of it himself, all he had to do was organise it from a computer in a secret place and profit from it. He was untouchable, impossible to find. Unless he wanted to see you, you would never see him. And yet there he was, that rainy day in November, in Q's cheap and dirty flat. And all he wanted to do was talk to Q.

"But you're talented, and worthwhile to them," Silva said.

"Maybe I'm better than most people with a computer, but not everyone. There are plenty of other people on my level. Why should they want me?"

"Because they don't know about anyone else. They only know about you."

"Because you told them about me."

"Yes. But they don't know that. They think they found you all by themselves. They're going to meet with you soon."

Q frowned up at him. "What exactly is your angle? You spent hours, days, telling me the story of your past with MI6. You hate them. You want them all to suffer as you suffered. Why would you throw me in there with them?" But as he asked the question the answer became apparent to him. "For your own benefit."

"I won't lie to you. Yes, for my benefit. I never imagined I'd be so lucky as to procure someone on the inside."

"And what's in it for me?" What a cliche thing to ask a criminal, knowing full well you were only getting yourself into trouble.

"A lot of money. A steady paycheck. Security, physical security. Notoriety. A reputation that could work in your favor, if you knew how to properly exploit it." FInally Silva sat down, sinking slowly onto an old recliner, his hands moving to rest on his knees. "I have told you my plans for revenge against MI6. You have asked me not to do it, but I am going to do it anyway. Inside, you could be my eyes. As you always have been. You could tell me what's happening inside, I could tell you what's happening outside, warn you in time, of course, to keep you safe. They say to keep your enemies close, don't they? They'll never realise we are working together. They'll never realise we even know each other. Not even if we went strolling hand in hand right in front their noses. With just a little effort from you, they might trust you forever."

Q thought about it for a few minutes before replying, and Silva was polite enough to give him time. They sat in silence, and Q considered his options. He thought about his life leading up to that point, he thought about what he wanted from his future, and what his future would look like if he didn't do it. He wondered what would happen if he worked for the government and then they found out he was conspiring with a rogue agent against them. Prison? He almost asked Silva what would happen if he was caught, but he knew Silva would just laugh. Prisons didn't exist to him. Imprisonment didn't exist. There was no lock in the world either of them couldn't turn. Q would be out in a day, as long as Silva didn't abandon him. And that was an entirely different matter, whether or not he trusted Silva. He'd wondered that for a long time, and knew he'd never know the answer. "They're going to give me an interview?" he asked finally.

"They're going to stalk you first," Silva replied. "And if you seem trustworthy and don't do anything naughty, at least while they're watching, they'll give you an interview."

Q picked at his thumbnail and thought some more. Then he shrugged. "Well," he said. "I've got nothing better on."

—

Q walked away from James Bond after meeting him for the first time and made his way next to the Elgin Marbles. He stood next to an apparent tourist, or at least an appreciator of art. It was eerily similar to what had just passed between himself and Bond. They both stared straight ahead, and spoke in low tones, and kept secrets from the rest of the world.

"You should have let him walk away first," Silva said, looking into the space where they eyes of a statue would have been, if it wasn't headless. "Make him think he's done with you before you're done with him. It'll flatter him."

"I swept in and out, like some kind of… magical… weaponry fairy," Q shrugged. "It was cool. He's impressed and intrigued."

Silva turned to take a quick look over their shoulders and scoffed. "He's enamored. If he ever tries to make a move on you—"

Q laughed, breathy and quiet.

"If he does," Silva insisted, his voice slightly louder, "I will change the plan slightly to cut his cock off."

A louder laugh escaped Q, and he turned to walk away, knowing they were too close to attracting attention. But he turned on his heel to give Silva one last piece of his mind, though he was still smiling. "I believe he'll end up at your island, but I still think it's a bad idea. He is remarkably good at killing a lot of people all by himself. He's probably more dangerous than anyone you've ever met before."

"Darling," Silva smiled at him before turning his back to him again, to stare into the missing eyes of the Marbles. "You forget he has never met anyone like me before. I plan to scare him shitless before ever showing him a gun. You underestimate how terrifying I can be once I get going. Once revenge is within my grasp. I have quite the speech prepared."

Q paused. "Can I hear it?"

Silva chuckled. "I'm sure Bond will tell you all about it. When we get back."

—

Silva laughed when Q told him he was supposed to go to Scotland. He laughed harder when he learned he was supposed to go to James Bond's childhood manor in Scotland. Q's heart was still pounding as they spoke on the phone. It had only been a few hours since Silva escaped, since Silva escaped because Q let him out, and Q never entirely believed Silva would actually get away. But he had. It made it all the more probable that his luck was running out. Q had a feeling Silva wasn't going to make it out of the highlands.

"But I don't know what's going to happen after you arrive. They've gone a bit AWOL, Bond and M. I don't know what they're planning. They apparently don't want our help at all, except to lead you there. I'm pretending to do something grandiose and complicated that only you will understand. Really I'm just calling you and telling you plainly." Q smiled, but sadly. "But I can't be your eyes. Isn't that my only real job? I don't know what comes next."

"What comes next is that I will be victorious. What comes next for you is that I'll call and tell you that I'm safe. Just wait a few more hours."

Q's thumb hovered over the button on his cellphone that would end the call. "Famous last words," he said. "Goodbye, Tiago."

Silva laughed. "Don't call me that. The government never forgets, I suppose. My old self must be the talk of the town. And you love him more than me."

"I like the sound of it better."

"You love him more than me," Silva repeated, "and you never even knew him."

Q swallowed thickly. "I think I did, once." Against his better judgement, knowing he might never speak to him again, he hung up. He wanted those words, and nothing more, to be ringing in Silva's ears as he flew himself toward death.


	3. Chapter 3

Q closed his eyes and let the sound of waves, the feeling of sand beneath his limbs take over his body. Calm, he told himself. Be calm.

Silva reached out and touched the skin behind Q's ear, just at the edge of his hairline. Q tried not to shiver.

"You're as pale as death," Silva said.

Q took a deep breath. "I'm fine. I'm regaining colour and… consciousness… as we speak."

Silva slid his hand down to the buttons of Q's shirt. "The flight can't have affected you that much. You were asleep most of the time." He undid the top button so a triangle of Q's throat was exposed to the sun, and then went on to the next.

"But I knew. I knew I was up in the air, going higher and higher just so I might fall farther and farther until I collide with the ground and become vapourised, or implode, or something."

Silva finished unbuttoning him and pulled his shirt open to reveal his chest and torso.

Q turned his head slightly, to check to see if anyone was spying on them. "Are you absolutely sure no one else is on this fucking island?"

"There are a few guards," Silva admitted. Q gave him a wary sideways look. "But they're watching the port, the skies for intruders. They're not watching us. And they know if I caught them looking at us I would kill them."

"You would not." At that point in their relationship Silva had never actually killed anyone, when it wasn't part of his former government job, at least as far as Q knew. It seemed like a ruse; like an exaggeration that Silva liked to throw around to sound more like the terrifying criminal he wanted to be, but wasn't really, deep down inside. Then again, could Silva have gotten as far as he did in the short time he had, could he intimidate people as much as he undeniably did, without some kind of murderous reputation that at least one person would swear was true?

Q was starting to realise that Silva saw everyone in the whole world as either effective or ineffective in his quest for revenge. On his path leading nowhere but to the murder of the woman who had sold him out, the woman he called M. It wouldn't have entirely surprised Q if Silva wouldn't balk at killing anyone he considered to be ineffective. But it might give him pause. He could say that much about Silva's character, at least.

Silva made some kind of thinly veiled excuse to carry Q to bed so he could recover from the flight, and Q obliged. One couldn't have so much sexual tension with another person and have any other expectations when that person invited them to their private island. It was Silva who had convinced him to go back to London, to give up on China and go home, "But first," Silva had said to him on the phone, the day after he quit his job at the hospital, "take a small detour to visit my new private island. I'm sure you'll love it."

Silva had procured the biggest, best house on the island for himself. In time, he would renovate it beyond recognition, but the island was still new to him then. It was still decorated for someone else. Q elected not to think about the family who used to live there. Silva carried him to the biggest, best bedroom in the house and there they made love.

Q had had a few trysts with boys as a teenager. At university he had a girlfriend who quickly became his fiancee more thanks to the efforts of his parents than himself. She'd cried when he told her he was taking an internship in Beijing, and promised to await the day he returned. She called or emailed him every day at first, and still emailed him weekly or so, though he'd stopped reading them months ago. The internship had changed him in ways he had never imagined it could. He thought he would learn to love his future career in biomedical engineering. Instead it led him to Silva, and he was hopelessly, forever corrupted. The glasses and cardigans, the sharp mind and pleasantries and manners would always be there, but there had always been something dark inside of him that Silva shone a light on and made him feel somehow better about. Silva said he had potential. Silva said there was more to life than being a doctor and a scientist, a good husband and a father, a university graduate and a law abiding citizen. Silva said he could be successful at anything if he was passionate enough about it. And Q passionately wanted to leave his old self behind. He just wanted to be happy, and he wasn't sure if he had ever been happy before. That was the one thing they understood about each other more than anything else.

So he let Silva take him, pleased and was pleased. The sex made him feel better. It grounded him, somehow. And he liked being so close, finally, to him. He'd wanted it for a long time, and he'd expected nothing less since the first time Silva spoke to him. While Silva was too busy moaning to talk incessantly about his plans, which he otherwise never shut up about, Q could pretend they were regular people. Maybe even regular people falling in love. Q could be a wayward young man, a recent ex-university student unsure of his next move. He could have met Silva, an eccentric older man who had a house and a company he headed somewhere, perhaps Madrid, and then this private island for vacations. Silva could be divorced, or a widower, or something, and Q could bring him back to life. Q could make him happy, even though he was so sad himself. They could have a real relationship, maybe. Maybe they could even be loyal to each other.

But that was just a fantasy. Something imaginary to think about because reality wasn't as good. Did he really want a normal life with Silva? Did he want a normal life at all? Did he really want to be able to change Silva's mind about going after and killing that woman? Was that the only reason he liked Silva at all, just because he might be able to save him before it was too late?

Wasn't that the hallmark feature of every relationship destined to fail?

At twilight they went back to the beach for a dinner that consisted of bread and wine. The first thing Silva did with the island, after taking it over completely, was setting up those speakers that would blare his favorite old vinyl records from shore to shore. He asked Q to stay forever. He asked him to take over half the enterprise, to earn half the money. "You've taught me a lot about how to get into others' computer systems, but it'd be easier for us both if you did it all for me instead," Silva laughed.

Q decided to throw a curve ball at him. "If I don't stay, and go back to London instead, are you going to see other people besides me?"

Silva stared at him for a moment, slowly processing the words, and then burst into a fit of laughter. "Darling boy, I don't have relationships with people."

"So you'll sleep with whomever you want," Q answered the question for him. "And what about me? Am I allowed to see other people?"

Silva's face fell. "Of course not." He frowned and took a sip of wine. He shook his head, gazing into his glass. "No, absolutely not."

"Is it pointless to ask why not?" Q asked.

"Because… because," Silva sighed in frustration, "you are my angel. You have to continue to do only good, and belong only to me. I belong to no one and I have no reason to be good." He looked into Q's eyes. "I hardly even exist."

"Is it pointless to ask if that's supposed to make sense?"

Silva smirked but didn't reply. They both knew Q wasn't staying.

"And will I ever see you again?" Q asked.

"I think this will be the first of dozens of times you'll ask me that," Silva answered. "Take some comfort in that."


	4. Chapter 4

The strangest thing about what happened to the European man in the Chinese hospital who ingested the hydrogen cyanide to kill himself is that it rotted, or more precisely, burned away some of the teeth and part of the jaw. It wounded the skin of the face and made one of the eyes droop so that the patient looked as sad as everyone assumed a man who tried to poison himself to death must surely feel inside.

That was why a team of young interns was sent in to help devise a particularly complex prosthetic, to attempt to allow the patient appear and function normally once more.

There was something about Silva that intrigued the boy who, in a few years, would be known as Q, though he didn't know then it was the sadness and a longing for escape that was so prevalent to them both. When the patient first arrived no one knew his name. No one knew what had happened to him until the blood tests came back and even then no one knew why. Except to shake his head when asked, "Did someone do this to you?" and to nod when asked, "Did you do it to yourself?" the patient did not communicate. Perhaps he did not understand Chinese or English very well. Perhaps, Q thought then, he was not even from this world.

Q paid special attention to him, and volunteered himself to work with the silent, nameless patient whenever possible. Usually his eyes were glazed over and he stared at an invisible point in space, lost in thought or memory. Q helped take a mould of the patient's mouth once it had healed enough. He, his fellow interns, and their professor designed a prosthetic for him, ready to use after a bit more healing occurred and whenever the patient might be emotionally ready. But he didn't seem emotionally ready, at that point, for much of anything.

After a month or so, someone much farther advanced in the profession than Q decided the patient was ready for his prosthetic. Q and his fellow students stood around the foot of his bed and watched while it was inserted the first time. If it made anyone else as uncomfortable as Q felt, they didn't show it. The rest of the students diligently took notes and apparently had no reaction at all. The patient had never really given his consent. Q didn't believe he was ready. He seemed stuck, or frozen in time, and it didn't seem like the right time for strangers to be shoving a foreign object into his mouth and up his cheek in a possibly futile attempt at rehabilitation.

But at least he could talk, now. If he wanted to.

Q was in the patient's room weeks later, alone with him, when they first spoke to each other. The other students joked that it had become Q's case, and his professor seemed to genuinely hope he'd figure it out. The name. The background. The reasoning. It didn't matter one way or another as far as medical care went, though the hospital would like to know who to send the bill to. But it was so strange to be so violent against yourself. It rendered everyone wildly curious.

"Fill these out, will you?" someone asked, and dropped a pile of paperwork in front of Q. "They're for your patient."

Q took the papers, and some of his own homework, into the patient's room. The patient was awake. Q told him good evening, and unsurprisingly received no response. He settled into a chair meant for visitors that went otherwise unused, and worked in silence for a while. He lost himself in paperwork, and the patient simply stared straight ahead.

After a while the silence started bothering Q. "Do you like music?" he asked the patient, who said nothing. He just blinked.

Q played some classical music from the little speakers in his phone. He figured it would be soothing and the least offensive genre he could have chosen. And he set to work again, sitting cross legged in the big upholstered chair, working on homework, paying no mind to the patient because he assumed the patient was doing nothing.

That was why he was so startled when he looked up half an hour later and found the patient staring at him. The patient dropped his gaze to the papers on Q's lap and spoke for the first time since he'd been admitted to the hospital. His voice was scratchy and raw from disuse. He almost whispered. "Does that have something to do with me?"

Q blinked a few times in rapid succession, still caught off guard. "Some of it," he finally managed to say. He held some of it out, but the patient made no move to take it, so he sat it on his bed, on top of the blanket. "It's just numbers and assessments. How often do you sleep, what time did you wake up, do you appear to be breathing normally. I'm not a doctor, or anything. I could get one, if you—" he stopped.

The patient shook his head so slightly it was almost indecipherable.

They stared at each other for a while. Finally the patient said, "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Q swallowed. "Like what?"

"Like I'm worth looking at."

Q thought on it, and tried to answer as best as he could. "Because you are, of course."

The patient moved his eyebrows. It might have been an appreciative look, or a grateful one, if Q wasn't too humble to consider it as such. "You're the first person I've looked in the eyes since I've come back to life."

"What's your name?" Q asked. He remembered afterward he should ask for the sake of his job and fellow interns. He really just wanted to know for himself.

The patient thought about it for a long time before answering, "Raoul Silva."

Had he forgotten his own name, or was he making it up? Q didn't have to ask, and he had no intention to prod. "What happened to you?"

"I tried to kill myself. And I failed."

Q wanted to ask why, but couldn't.

"Why?" Silva asked for him. "Because I was being tortured, and I wanted it to stop. That's why."

Q dropped his eyes to the edge of Silva's bed, a safer place to look, and said, "I'm sorry."

Silva didn't reply.

"I won't tell anyone your name, or what happened, if you don't want me to."

The corner of his mouth twitched, like he was almost going to smile. "Keeping secrets for me already?"

"Well, you're a human being, not a medical experiment."

"Sounds like you're more loyal to me than your fellow… what do you call them?"

"Interns."

"How did a British boy like you ever end up in China? That's where we are, isn't it? I haven't been outside in…" a shadow passed over his face and he didn't finish the sentence.

"I'm studying abroad. Scientists here are farther advanced than we are in Europe in biomedical engineering." Q paused. "It'll look good on my resume."

Silva laughed a humorless laugh, a breath of air through his nose. "Ah."

"And… and what do you do? For a living?" Out of curiosity, and without the intention to tell anyone else, he wanted to know what might have led this man down such a path that seemed to end in a Chinese hospital, a victim of torture and failed suicide.

Silva thought again before speaking, like he was trying to think of the right thing to say. Eventually he said, "I seek revenge."

Q wondered what he meant, exactly. It sounded illegal and dangerous, if not outright violent. Q tried, every day of his life, to get used to people walking all over him, taking from him and hurting him, and to act like it didn't bother him. He always thought that was what it meant to be an adult. A petulant child cried and hit back. A successful adult let bad things happen to them and never sought revenge. But it always felt wrong to him. Perhaps it always felt wrong to Silva, too.

"How?" Q asked.

"What do you think I've been doing all this time? I was thinking. Planning. I have the plan, I just need to get started. I need to get out of here."

"You're free to go, of course," Q said. "I mean, the hospital would love for you to fill out endless paperwork about your background and income and insurance, and all that bullshit. But no one is keeping you here."

"Except me," Silva said. "I'm afraid to start. I won't be able to stop."

"What if…" Q crossed his legs nervously, feeling he was approaching a line he probably shouldn't cross. "What if you… didn't… seek revenge? You could start over again. You could live quietly, in a small town, with—"

"Like you do?" Silva interrupted. "And are you happy, with your little university degree, and your internship, and your insurance paperwork?"

"Are you seeking revenge to be happy?"

Silva didn't answer. He waited for Q to answer him.

"I'm not exactly perfect, I'm not so bland and blind as you think I am."

"Oh?"

"I'm not a sheep," Q said.

"Oh."

"I've… caused havoc, a few times."

Finally Silva laughed, flashing a glimpse of his new teeth.

"Anonymously, I mean."

"Anonymously?" Silva repeated, amused.

"Yes. Anonymously. The Internet, you know. You ever heard of it?"

Silva laughed again. "Once or twice."

Q was ruffled. He frowned at the floor, half angry, half trying not to laugh, and hoping he wasn't blushing.

"All right, darling boy," Silva said, sitting up straighter and moving his legs over the side of the bed. "You've woken me up. I'm leaving. I'm off to begin my adventure."

"You're leaving?" Q asked, getting to his feet. "Now?"

"Are you going to stop me?"

They stared at each other a moment, Q unsure of what to say. "Can you even walk?"

Silva took a few steps and put his hands in the air. Ta da.

"Let me get your clothes," Q said. He rushed to find the effects Silva had arrived with as a patient — boring trousers and a plain white shirt, a gold watch and a ring. No wallet. Nothing else.

Silva took them wordlessly when Q returned and he disappeared into the restroom. When he came back he looked perfectly normal, though a little disheveled.

They looked at each other again, and Silva nodded. "Goodbye."

"Bye…" Q said uncertainly when Silva was halfway out the door.

He was gone, out of sight, for a few seconds. The classical music played on from the little table next to the bed. And then he popped his head back through the door.

"I was going to leave, and leave you out of it," he said. "But maybe you could help me." He was half in, half out of the room, just as he always would be in Q's life.

Q thought he felt the ground beneath his feet shift, just a little. His heart was pounding. "Maybe," was all he said.

"What is your name, darling boy?"


End file.
